Rick Holmes: Listen to the 99 percenters

Rick Holmes

Monday

Oct 17, 2011 at 12:01 AMOct 17, 2011 at 5:17 PM

Don't be fooled by those who say the 99 percenters have nothing to say. They haven't been listening, and they don't want you to listen, either. What is just getting started is the most important movement since, well, the tea party. Pay attention –– or better yet, join the conversation.

One of the stranger criticisms of the Occupy Wall Street movement is that the people camping out, carrying signs and discussing America's future in parks across the country haven't issued a list of demands.

The demonstrators have yet to crystallize their message, the mainstream pundits say. These grungy slackers don't even know what they want, the conservative pundits say. We don't get it, say people who get their news and views from pundits.

But why should we expect specific demands? These folks aren't kidnappers holding America hostage; they are Americans expressing their opinions. They've got plenty of them, and they aren't keeping them secret. That's the point.

In a tent city at Occupy Boston, self-expression is one of the main activities. Large rolls of paper are stretched across a concrete wall asking, "What is Wrong with this Country?" and "What is Right with this Country?" Hand-written answers fill every available space.

This is a sign the tent city supplies all the materials needed for anyone to affix any message to cardboard. There's also an open mic from which anyone can speak, and there’s a daily general assembly at which anyone can help make decisions.

As a matter of principle and tactics, the Boston group has no designated spokesman to translate its message, no board of directors to adopt a platform and no formal affiliation with similar demonstrations in New York or elsewhere.

Eventually, some structure and some policy prescriptions will emerge, not just from the hard core of mostly young people sleeping in the tents, but also from the far larger and more diverse constituency of "99 percenters" who have been energized by the discovery of people suddenly speaking their language.

At this point, Jason Potteiger, a "media volunteer" at Occupy Boston, told me, "We're here to have a discussion."

The discussion and the demonstrations start with an emotion quite similar to the feeling that gave birth to the tea party in 2009: the sense that America is headed in the wrong direction.

There are other similarities: hand-made signs, "Don't Tread on Me" flags, the call to "take our country back" –– in this iteration, from the big banks and corporations –– and the presence of fringe characters and fringe ideas so irresistible to the media and those interested in discrediting the movement.

Like the tea partiers, the 99 percenters are mad about the bank bailouts, but it’s not just about the bailouts. They are also mad about the criminal and ought-to-be-criminal recklessness of the banks before the bailout and what the biggest banks have done since:

They used the taxpayers' money to pay out huge bonuses and to lobby against tighter government regulation.

They've done next to nothing to resolve the mortgage crisis they created.

They are still blowing their money in the Wall Street casino instead of lending it to small businesses.

They are mad about 30 years of the rich getting richer while the middle class gets squeezed; mad about crippling student debt and millions of jobs shipped overseas; mad that both parties are in the pockets of big business and still can't agree on any action to create jobs.

They are mad that, as Sen. Bernie Sanders notes, "The top 1 percent earn more income than the bottom 50 percent, and the richest 400 Americans own more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans."

We should not be surprised at this anger. A new analysis of Census data shows that median household income has fallen nearly 10 percent in less than four years. According to former Reagan administration economist Martin Feldstein, the wealth of American homeowners has shrunk by $9 trillion –– nearly 40 percent –– since the housing bubble burst in 2006.

Things aren't getting better; in fact, they are getting worse. If you aren't angry, you're not paying attention.

The tea party was co-opted early on by the establishment. Republican insider Dick Armey and billionaire activists David and Charles Koch provided funding, organizational support and message control. Fox News and conservative talk radio amplified the tea partiers' messages that suited their political agenda. Washington think tanks and Republicans in Congress translated those messages into legislation.

I don't know what will happen to the Occupy groups. The idea of ongoing protests in a central location owes more to the Arab Spring than the tea party. Semi-permanent encampments are more accessible to the public than one-time rallies, but they also create an echo chamber in which the hard-core protesters can become disconnected from the mainstream and blind to how their actions appear to outsiders.

The media love conflict, and the occupiers' message will get lost and their movement marginalized if their protests deteriorate into continuing clashes with the police.

But the Occupy tent-dwellers are a small subset of the 99 percenters. Far from just occupying public space in a few locations, the 99 percenters are inserting ideas and energy into the nation's political dialogue.

As their momentum builds, politicians and think tanks will provide the policy details some now find lacking. If it works, we may find a year from now that the growing income gap between the ultra-rich and the rest of us has become as big a priority as the national debt.

We may find that amnesty for corporate tax-dodgers –– the "tax holiday" being proposed by companies now hoarding trillions in profits overseas –– has become as toxic as amnesty for illegal immigrants.

We may see serious consideration of breaking up the nation's too-big-to-fail banks, or of a tiny tax on financial transactions that could be used to pay down government debt, mortgage debt and student loans.

We may even see a rising call for the government to help people who have been hurt by the recession instead of helping the companies that laid them off.

Don't be fooled by those who say the 99 percenters have nothing to say. They haven't been listening, and they don't want you to listen, either. What is just getting started is the most important movement since, well, the tea party. Pay attention –– or better yet, join the conversation.

Rick Holmes, opinion editor of the MetroWest Daily News in Massachusetts, blogs at Holmes & Co. He can be reached at rholmes@wickedlocal.com.

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